Guillermo del Toro was “going to direct” a Star Wars movie, with a screenplay by The Dark Knight's David S. Goyer.
Screenwriter David S. Goyer – perhaps best known for his work on Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy and TV’s Foundation – has revealed that he and director Guillermo del Toro came close to making a Star Wars film together. The “unproduced” movie was in the works at LucasFilm “about four years ago,” Goyer added.
The revelation came to light during a conversation with Josh Horowitz on the latter’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, in which Goyer also said that he “wrote an unproduced scriptment for an origins of the Jedi movie, also for Star Wars... that took place 25,000 years before the first Star Wars film.”
Although Goyer didn’t – and likely couldn’t – elaborate on why his del Toro-directed project never happened, he did allude to “a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff going on at LucasFilm at the time.” He also added that, “It’s a cool script. There’s a lot of cool artwork from it that was produced.”
Read more: Guillermo del Toro’s Dr Frankenstein reportedly shooting in February 2024
Del Toro subsequently confirmed Goyer’s story, quote-tweeting Horowitz with the words, “True. Can’t say much. Maybe two letters ‘J’ and ‘BB’ is that three letters?”
True. Can’t say much. Maybe two letters “J” and “BB” is that three letters? https://t.co/qpGaSD3y7F
— Guillermo del Toro (@RealGDT) September 21, 2023
We stared at those three letters for several minutes and still couldn’t fathom what del Toro’s alluding to. Is BB a reference to the cute little droid, BB-8? Is it too obvious to suggest that the ‘J’ stands for Jedi, or is it a vague nod to JJ Abrams or even Jar Jar Binks?
The good folks at Slashfilm seem to have the scoop that del Toro actually means Jabba the Hut. In 2015, the outlet reported that del Toro was interested in making a really cool Jabba the Hut Star Wars film and in 2017, the director had even met with Kathleen Kennedy, but clearly, nothing ever came of it.
Given his love of everything from twisted monster love stories (The Shape of Water), dark fairy tales (Pan’s Labyrinth) and massive, stompy robots (Pacific Rim), we can only imagine what a Star Wars film directed by Guillermo del Toro would have looked like. It could have been amazing, couldn’t it?
You can listen to (and watch) Josh Horowitz’s full podcast on YouTube.
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